Fires are a common phenomenon in the environment, and arise from natural causes such as lightening, or human interactions that are negligent or deliberate (e.g., arson). Many fires pose great danger with respect to human life, property damage, and environmental damage, and often spread if left unattended. For those and other reasons, fires often necessitate human intervention to achieve their suppression or extinguishing. The dangers are much worse in forest fires where temperatures can reach over 1400 degrees Fahrenheit. These forest fires can pose grave danger to firefighters, and can melt vehicles and equipment as far away as 50 feet and can cause ignition of equipment, especially vehicles, up to 100 feet away.
A variety of approaches to fire suppression have been developed. Many approaches involve deploying a plurality of trained firefighters, specialized equipment (e.g., fire trucks, helicopters and/or other aircraft), and extinguishing chemicals and/or water. As such, the monetary and logistical cost of firefighting can be staggering. These and other issues may be exacerbated by the scarcity of firefighting resources and/or the increasing prevalence of environmental conditions (e.g., drought, climate change) that are conducive to fire. Characteristics of a site at which a fire burns may complicate fire suppression as well, such as its remote location (e.g., in the wilderness), low accessibility (e.g., high elevation, rough terrain), etc.
Even when successfully deployed to a burn site, a firefighting brigade may face factors which reduce its efficacy. For example, a tradeoff may be imposed between the ability to closely approach a fire yet maintain a sufficient distance to protect firefighters and equipment.
Several attempts have been made to resolve the problems stated above by using soil as a fire suppressant. However, these attempts have various limitations and problems. For example, some attempts require vehicles to be placed in dangerous proximity to a fire, (e.g., within 100 feet) require expensive and imported sand for operation, and are not able to project soil effectively. Specifically, the methods heretofore have not demonstrated the ability to move or project soil to distances beyond ten to twenty-five feet, which is not adequate to fight the fires safely. Patented references have disclosed inventions that ‘throw or spray’ soil rather than ‘shoot, “propel, shoot or project” in a small-circumference, fast-moving steam, thus, those references do not show that their devices project soil far enough to keep personnel and equipment at a distance away from the extreme temperatures of wild fires and forest fires for safety, or to provide continuous, sustain operations of the firefighting systems or equipment. Equipment and methods must be developed for firefighting operators to bring soil to the fire rather than people and equipment to the fire. Therefore the soil must be shot in a high velocity stream, rather than thrown, sprayed or spread, to be successful in fighting such large fires. In addition, the inventions of the referenced patenentees do not provide systems or devices that will project soils to distances resulting in the extinguishing or suppression of fires in large areas. As an example, the larger the distance of soil projection, the larger the area (acreage) that can be extinguished, in a much shorter and critical time period, and lessons the need and frequency of redployment.